The wars down the years

Forty years of conflict in the Middle East
The wars down the years

1967: June: The Six Day war.

1970: September: Clashes between King Hussein’s troops and those of the Palestinian resistance, which is expelled from Jordan the following year and sets itself up in Lebanon.

1973: October: Egyptian and Syrian armies attack Israel in the Yom Kippur or Ramadan war, which Israel wins.

1975: April: Start of the Lebanese civil war, which lasts until the Taif accords (1989) and causes 150,000 deaths (official estimates).

1978: March: Israel invades south Lebanon and creates a “security zone”.

1980: September: Iraq invades Iran. Start of a war which ends in 1988 with two million dead.

1982: June: Start of Israel’s bigger invasion of Lebanon. Israel does not evacuate the south of the country until 2000.

1987: December: Start of the first intifada in Gaza, then in the West Bank; it continues until 1991 causing 1,500 Palestinian deaths.

1990: August: Invasion of Kuwait by Iraq.

1991: January-March: First Gulf war (150,000 Iraqi deaths, 466 coalition deaths).

1994: May-July: Civil war in Yemen.

1996: April: Israel’s Operation Grapes of Wrath against Lebanon.

September: Clashes in Iraqi Kurdistan. Intervention by the Iraqi army and US bombing raids.

2000: September: Start of the second intifada, which lasts until 2005, killing 1,000 Israelis and 4,500 Palestinians.

2001: September-October: Al-Qaida attacks in New York and Washington, then the start of the war on Afghanistan.

2002: March-June: Operation Defensive Shield: Israel retakes the whole of the West Bank.

2003: March-April: Anglo-American war on Iraq begins.

2006: July-August: Israel’s war on Lebanon (1,300 Lebanese are killed and 160 Israelis).